This is my parents. Between the two of them I bet they average 3 new phones per year, because they keep buying cheap Android phones, but they just can't bring themselves to spend more, even though it'd actually be cheaper and then their phone wouldn't suck. Plus because they keep buying Android and all these cheap phones run on different major versions and with different vendor customizations, they're constantly having trouble with wildly different UI for even basic things like the phone "app".

Marques Brownlee aka MKBHD and even he admitted that's not the case anymore.

Good phones are getting more and more expensive. A flagship used to cost $700 5 years ago, now it's $1000+.

Cheap phones are getting good, but not at the rate that good phones are getting more expensive.

> For what it's worth I'm still daily driving LG G2 and it's legit still fast, sure sometimes it's a bit sleepy but it's still more then usable!

A quick Googling tells me your phone is from 2013 and can only be updated to Android 5. Your phone is either:

* horrendously out of date and insecure

* using a custom ROM (which I, for one, and many others probably too, don't want to do)

* not used for any kind of internet facing activity (another thing that I and others don't want to do)

Also, you probably have a very low bar for usability and speed. With modern OSes and sites, that phone would probably be extremely slow and laggy for my (and many others') usage.

Your phone uses a Snapdragon 800 which probably has 10-15% (maybe 20-25% if I'm being generous) of the performance of a modern Snapdragon. Phones are not desktops/laptops, where performance levels plateaued in 2005.

I've used $40 Android phones, and they're barely usable with modern apps.

Once the battery starts to degrade, which happens quickly, performance drops from barely usable to intermittently usable, with frequent freezing and reboots.

Looking at Sprint.com, iPhones are available for $18 a month.

Do you own a laptop or a workstation?

> Which one is more economical over time?

My sub-100USD android apparently. What the heck kind of math do you have going on for "economical?"

I used to buy new phones every generation when they were $3-400.

And back then that money would land you a noticeably better phone, usually with some new capabilities.

These days “good” phones are $1000+ and each generation only gets you better specs.

Fuck that. I’m keeping my working phone. Peak smartphone was probably 3-5 years ago. Since then there’s been nothing really new.

For the first week, at least. Then they start to accumulate cruft and slow down, eventually becoming barely usable.

I've experienced it in the past. I see it happen for my friends and family. I decided some time ago to save up that $750 - $1k and go for the high-range phones, so that I can use them for two or three years without daily frustrations.

The top-most commenter is right. Phones are used even more frequently than cars; for many, even more frequently than other types of computers combined. It's one of those things it's not worth to cheap out on - like a mattress or an office chair.

(Now, of course part of me is happy for the mid-range phones costing what they do, because this is why high-end phones cost $1k and not $10k.)

A new smartphone in the US is $600-800 off contract.

In my own experience: that puts it in line with (A) my car which I purchased and titled for $500 last year, and (B) my workstation which cost $1200 without peripherals.

Both my car and workstation are, unsurprisingly, modular systems that can be useful for years or even decades with proper care.

My retired work-station is still in use as a file-server, and that machine is 8 years old. My car is 300,000 miles young without a single major mechanical fault.

---

So from where I'm standing: $600 is a rather sizable chunk of change that I'd much rather spend on a system that's _not designed to be disposable._

I can't even find a current-gen smartphone that I'm remotely interested in purchasing. The "smaller and lighter" you speak is not so much _smaller_ but _thinner._

I don't need, or even desire a 1080p screen on my phone; despite being interested in other current gen components like the latest round of cameras.

You can't make the physical package and smaller than the _gigantic displays_ these phones are being equipped with. I would sooner part with $600 for an iPhone 4S-sized "endo skeleton" with current gen "RAM and CPU modules" and a slightly smaller battery. A tradeoff that's possible when you're dealing with modules... but a financial disaster when you're trying to design a mass-market phone to compete with the Android flagships.

Are you also surprised that people spend over 50000€/$ on a car? The answer is simple: because it turns out that having nice things is nice.

It's inexplicable when there are alternative phones available for 1/10 the cost. Why would you choose to take on a $40/mo expense when you could buy an entire fully functioning low end Android phone for $40?

> And so on and so on. I pay more upfront to save a ton down the line.

But my example is that I'm paying less upfront than my neighbors. They are the ones buying iPhones and name brand cereal with SNAP while I'm over here using cheap phones and eating generic brand cereal. It just seems paradoxical is all I'm saying.

Ironically, me.

I changed the battery last year, it costed me 13$ (~12 euros), it is as good as new.

Now it might be that my Android phone is Chinese as well, so it actually costed me less than 10¢ a day. Even if I had to replace my Android smartphone, I could have changed it 3 times in the past 7 years and still spend less than buying an iPhone that lasted me 7 years.

I could still easily sell it for 30-40 euros, making it even cheaper.

If all you care about is texting, making calls, playing the occasional game[1], browsing the web, doing mobile banking, listening to music, watching videos, using social media, responding to work emails, viewing the occasional PDF, word processed document or spreadsheet sent over email, screencasting to a TV, using the device as a mobile hotspot, testing software you write for phones ... and a few more less frequent things (Like using employers paging app, employers internal systems) ... then you don't get any additional value spending more than $400 on a phone.

Don't ask me what you can do with a phone that costs more, because I haven't yet seen anyone do something on their phone that my <$400 phone cannot do.

[1] Wordle, for example, is insanely popular right now.

Oh please. What about food? Fuel/energy? Insurance? Clothing? Any single one of these budgets is bigger for probably all of us than our smartphone budget.

As for myself, all of the above budgets (except for fuel/energy maybe) have gotten slightly cheaper in recent years. (I live in Germany.) And that includes smartphones; the average smartphone is lasting longer and getting cheaper unless you're looking at the flagships whose price is driven entirely by market segmentation.

Assumption on your part. I see people that really do spend $800+ on their phones and I don't think jealousy ever entered into the equation, more like 'wow, they can't handle money'.

Maybe their jealousy is just in your head?

In my world too but most smartphones sold these days in fact do not have removable batteries by design. You don't know this?

>Buying a new (crappy, what do you expect for 50 Dollars?) phone because your perfectly working one isn't supported anymore is NOT satisfying and not a solution

That $50 phone is just as good or better than a phone sold 3 or 4 years ago.

>I feel that you're a bit lost. You want to save a bit of money

No dude... I buy a new phone every two years to have a faster one, better features (camera), and better security features (fingerprint reader). Lucky me, I can afford it. My secondary phone is a 2 1/2 year old Nexus 5 which still gets security updates and will for many more years via custom ROMs. Security updates were not the reason I bought a new phone.

Sorry, you don't really seem to be up on current smartphone technology to comment on this intelligently but philosophically I do agree with you.

Spending $300 on a phone is not something anyone anywhere in the world does if they are on a budget. In some corners of the world, $300 is close to a monthly wage. How out of touch can someone be to claim this price tag is something someone spends when they are on a budget?

The reason why Chinese manufacturers like Huawei are gobbling the smartphone market in particular and the telecommunication sector in general is that they understand what "budget" means. Their product line targets budget-minded consumers, with plenty of models that cost less than $150. You can get low-end models for around $50. What could possibly suggest anyone that "budget" implies a price tag that's 6 times greater than that?

> I don’t care. I’ll pay for convenience. This phone was a thousand dollars!

The average US smartphone consumer is paying like $500 (substantially less anywhere outside of North America) and saying their limit is substantially less than even that, if you look at both actual average price data and surveys of what consumers say they are willing to pay, so (1) not buying a $1000 phone, (2) not aware of how much they are actually paying for a phone, and (3) not as willing to pay extra for convenience as you suggest.

Weren’t those carrier subsidized? You can still get a smartphone for $0 if you’re willing to accept a multi-year contract.

Damn, I feel silly, I have bought 9 phones over the past 3 years and still haven't spent that kind of money...

If you have the money, and use your phone a lot, then why not buy a a $800 phone (Android or iOS) with every new release?

Except if not having enough money or being tight with money even if one has plenty of them, puts one in the "enlightened" category -- or is that only when it comes to mobile phone purchases?